Monday, January 9, 2017

My Neighbor Totoro - House

In Expo 2005 Aichi Commemorative Park (also known as Moricoro Park) in Nagakute close to Nagoya, they've built a replica of Satsuki and Mei's House from My Neighbor Totoro, so I took a train to Aichikyūhaku-kinen-kōen Station and had a look.

The park is massive, but there's an information booth at the entrance where you can get a map.

In the information booth they also had tons of My Neighbor Totoro goods for sale.

Some signs around the park showing the way if you get lost.

There's a ticket booth near the house with a waiting area.

They also had a small cart with My Neighbor Totoro goods here.

Lots of plushies and keychains for sale.

They give you a lanyard with a badge showing the entrance time when you buy a ticket. I got one for the first group of the day at 10:00. You need to show up 15 minutes before the actual entrance time to go through the rules.

This is the gate to the area with the house. You need to have a ticket to enter and get a guided tour. Each tour lasts 30 minutes and there's room for up to 50 people in each group.

The house. Since it's a guided tour only and there's a limited amount of people allowed in each group, they can sell out of tickets.

Image from My Neighbor Totoro - 04m50s

Closeup of the house. You're allowed to take pictures outside, but not inside.

Image from My Neighbor Totoro - 62m18s

The main entrance on the side of the house.

Image from My Neighbor Totoro - 68m45s

Front of the house. Goro Miyazaki oversaw the construction of this replica.

Image from My Neighbor Totoro - 50m58s

Outside the front of the house they have the bus stop sign from Totoro.

Image from My Neighbor Totoro - 26m32s

Picture from the front porch.

Image from My Neighbor Totoro - 62m31s

This small chair with the paint set is similar to the one shown in the movie.

Image from My Neighbor Totoro - 59m11s

This is the room where Satsuki and Mei's father works.

Image from My Neighbor Totoro - 26m53s

Even if you weren't allowed to take pictures while inside the house, you were allowed to take pictures looking inside as long as you stayed outside, so here's a closeup of the desk.

The rest of the room. There's a stained glass window on the right.

A look at the stained glass window from the outside.

Image from My Neighbor Totoro - 07m19s

The rest of the wall to the right in the previous picture.

Image from My Neighbor Totoro - 13m39s

A look at the insides.

Image from My Neighbor Totoro - 10m14s

And the living rooms. There's various closets and dressers inside with futons, clothes and other items shown in the movie.

Image from My Neighbor Totoro - 07m29s

Continuing around the house, there's this little porch.

You can also see this round window in the previous shot.

Image from My Neighbor Totoro - 69m58s

Inside here is the dining area.

Image from My Neighbor Totoro - 29m30s

There's a pair of geta sandals on top of the stone in front of the entrance to the dining area, just like in the movie.

Image from My Neighbor Totoro - 18m19s

Kitchen door.

Image from My Neighbor Totoro - 18m10s

A look inside the kitchen.

Image from My Neighbor Totoro - 69m20s

Outside the house near the kitchen there's also a hand-pump well.

Image from My Neighbor Totoro - 25m08s

After I had visited the house I also went up to a nearby viewing platform. You can get a view of the house here even if they're sold out of entrance tickets.

Closer look. You can see the next group of people visiting the house.

On the top here is an information folder about the house in Japanese and an English photocopy. In the bottom left is a shortcut map to get from the park entrance to the house the fastest and on the bottom right is the entrance ticket I got.